words from others and words from home about the "normal" world around us.

Sunday, December 02, 2012

Timo

Timo

This is a story that begins with a lucky
punishment and ends with a profoundly sad phone call… but the middle part is
about fifty years of fun and laughter. It all starts way back in the early
sixties at Pius X High School where one skinny dude with braces met another
skinny dude with braces and they became fast friends. In the beginning we were
all just some kids hanging around on the blacktop; boys in their trendy
Pendleton shirts, girls in their Catholic school color coded uniforms with matching
ribbons in their big hair…Ray Lamont was attempting to run back punts for the
Warriors with eight opponents surrounding him, the Knowlton boys had lots of
hair, Disa was the co-captain of the Pi-high flag twirlers, we all wore 26 inch
waist 501’s and my brother was a nice boy who went to mass on Sunday. Tim had a
name that was easy to remember because they often said it over the school
public address along with mine on Friday afternoons “the following students
will report for Saturday detention tomorrow …Appeldoorn, Balderama, Booze, Coy,
Creason etc.” Actually, that is where Tim and I became pals when Coach Heideman
gave us the same punishment of cleaning the home team’s locker room during one
long Saturday morning in 1963. We found we had a lot in common which included
talking about sports, an admiration of Pius girls, Motown, more talk about baseball, basketball,
football and the willingness to break some rules. When we left Pius on that
detention day we both looked like the
Pillsbury doughboy because we were wearing in layers the many jerseys we had
swiped from that locker room.

This bond was cemented in Junior year when
Tim talked me into working a tricky transfer from Spanish 3 to Mr. Buckart’s
wood shop class which was really a series of teenaged bad behavior
one-upmanship taking place first in wood, then metal shop where the pranks and
ensuing detentions were plentiful. Imagine two dozen, poorly supervised,
irresponsible delinquents standing in front of power tools or walking around
holding white-hot pieces of metal.
Neither of us were even in the same hemisphere with “handy with tools”
so when we partnered up for a project it set some kind of record for
incompetence in wood. The mere mention of this “project” would cause both of us
to become paralyzed with laughter for decades to come since it started out as a
shoeshine kit and ended as a “milking stool” that received a charitable D- from
Buckart. Fans of Pius basketball may remember star player Balderama missing a
St. Anthony game because some idiot came up behind him and startled him as he
used a band saw in that same shop causing him to saw his thumb to the bone.
Metal shop in our senior year was even worse.

It always amazed me that Tim would consent
to be my pal since he was a bona fide big man on campus by way of his
basketball prowess and his dating success with several of the cutest girls in
school. I, on the other hand was on the golf team, had a VW Beetle and could
get beer. As was the case for his entire life he was not a big ego guy and if
he liked your sense of humor you were gold but if you crossed him he was a
terrible grudge holder. We also played a lot of pick-up basketball together and
as confirmed gym rats we formed, with Paul Knowlton a formidable three-on-three
team. Unlike me, Tim passed the ball and played good defense. Our friendship
was fired in many a crucible including the time I unknowingly ripped into him
for being late to a church league basketball game on the night his Dad passed
away. He let me know in a very kind way that the father he loved deeply had
died and he would not be playing on that night. When my embarrassment subsided
it began to sink in that his life was about to change dramatically like no one
I had ever known. He was eighteen years old and pretty much left to fend for
himself. Yet, Timo was never a whiner
and just made a choice to join the Air Force a year after high school. Airman
Balderama eventually was posted to Vietnam where he claimed to have
gone to more bars than patrols but truthfully his life was in danger many times
in Saigon. Mostly he spent his
service in Georgia going to Allman Brothers
concerts and Northern California having a ball until he
finished his tour.

It was in Northern California where he met his first wife
and proudly fathered his daughter Tandra but for reasons he never discussed
with me the relationship foundered and he showed up back in LA with empty
pockets and a broken heart. This was the first time when our friendship began
to work like mountaineers with one of us pulling the other up by a rope and
then switching roles later as we struggled up the rocky shelves we were
climbing in our twenties. He had no car and had to work in his Uncle’s china
factory but on weekends he would come and stay with me in West L.A. where we smoked and drank
and dreamed about what might have been and what we hoped the future might
hold. After a couple of tough years for
him he caught a break when John Sheehy helped him get a landscapers job with
the city of South Gate and within months he was on his feet and life was
looking good again. In 1976 I was lost and he tossed me the rope, pulling me up
out of my personal wreckage by letting my two cats and I move into his house on
Virginia Avenue. It was one of the most important kindnesses I
ever received in my life. As a matter of fact, the next few years were some of
the most relaxed years of my life and I can’t imagine a person being easier to
live with than Tim. We had a sad old color TV that you could not turn off, a
bunch of old easy chairs from ValueVillage and a kitchen and bathroom
most women would not even consider stepping into. Pals called the place Club Virginia and boy rules were in
effect at all times. He paid the rent, I cooked and neither one of us
cleaned. Our relationship reached the
pinnacle of guy-communication when we passed a number of entire days by merely
snapping our fingers at each other. I am serious.

It was in South Gate that Tim caught his second
great break when he wandered into the Bank of America down on Alexander and
spotted a cute young lady who had gone to Pius with us back in the day. When he
came home and said the name “Disa” I could hear a little choir of angels in his
voice and knew his days as my roommate were numbered. Luckily, I had managed to
find a job in late 1979 when Timo left me stewardship of club Virginia and put
a gold band on the hand of that same Pius girl. I will say it with the greatest
amount of pride that I was his best man at the wedding and was Tim’s best
friend for all those many years. But truthfully, his best friend from that day
forward was Disa and this was a love story as sweet as any told in the movies.
He settled into life on Alexander and their home was a place I grew to love
deeply, even with the repeated bed-time shouts of “Goodnight Ian!!” Tim and
Disa’s home with the tree growing out of the wall in the den was as welcoming
and nurturing a pad as the rosiest in the American dream. It was a also the home base of the Strange Heads
softball team that grew out of basketball teams Tim and I played on called
“Straw Hat Pizza Guys” and the “Hula Gal Tavern.” Slow pitch was taking hold
around South GatePark and Tim, Billy Hogan and I
decided we wanted to be part of that action and Bill got us a sponsor (C&H
Auto) and we picked up guys we played with in Pee Wee league and started to
learn the game. Eventually, C&H became “the Base Sages” and finally the
“Strange Heads,” the name little seven-year-old Erin came up with when she saw
we all wore different baseball hats. We
weren’t bad but we were great after games over at Flories Pizza on Abbot road
where the kids begged quarters for the video games and our exploits were
magnified exponentially by the number of pitchers of beer consumed. I would be
remiss if I didn’t mention Timo’s two out, three-run walk-off tater to beat the
top-ranked Shetler team, two league championships and of course beating the
Post Office team twice for the J-boy. There are many old Heads here today and
the team continues to play right on up to a couple of weeks ago, continuing an
amazing tradition of thirty-plus years playing ball…now into a third
generation!

We also had great fun on “Card Night”
where the old gang tried to pick the winners of college and pro-football games
while altering their consciousness enough to have something to blame for their
failures on Monday morning. Tim’s amazing creativity was brought to light as we
developed a ritual of composing small poem’s to emphasize our picks for the
consensus card of the week. He called his “Timo’s Touts The Butcher’s Best
Bets” and they read like: “Woody Hayes-a man, a maniac, or a monster. Call him
anything you like but call him gone. The Buckeyes can raise their heads at
last. They will look up and pick oranges from Syracuse and gobble the sweet fruits
of victory…#19 on your card OhioState!” He also was a clever songwriter using the
music of jingles and creating his own lyrics. All of this was just part of his
considerable and quick wit that just got better as he got older. Once, at a
party when I said “I was best man at his wedding…both of them! He zinged me in
return “I knew his girl friends…both of them!” Yet, it was a badge of Timo
honor to be the target of one of his zingers because it meant he cared about
you.

He was also a fine coach of youth
basketball and won league titles with a group of kids who responded to his John
Wooden inspired schemes including the zone trap and fast break offense. He was
a sound teacher and never yelled at his players ever. No one understood the game of basketball
better than Tim and as he told it if he was coaching Pius in 1964 they would
have won CIF going away…. So went the 70’s and then the beginning of the 80’s
and as time passed many of the fellas left “the Gate” and spread out across the
west. We mostly kept in touch and despite being a man of few words Timo
remained at the center of our circle. Thanks to a start from Jim Grimes he put
in an honorable career as a meat cutter and retired after thirty years of very
hard work without ever complaining about the job or the places he had to
toil. In his welcomed retirement he made
his personal appearances on golf courses, at Bruin games at the Rose Bowl and
on Opening Day at Dodger stadium, a tradition we shared for twenty glorious
years. He brought the steaks, the wine and the optimism for every season we
celebrated up at my old shack in the hills. Still, in sizing up our
relationship we did celebrate 11 Laker, 4 Dodger and 11 Bruin world or national
championships. Yes we did. There were also plenty of rough patches and more
than a few gallons of tears that we also shared over the years but he was
always there to say, “lean on me.” There were pleasant surprises along the way,
he was amazed and elated by the discovery of a sister he had never known, a blood
link from his Dad who managed to make a connection via the Internet. All the
stars seemed to be aligned for living happily ever after.

In the last few years the knee problems
that plagued him from decades standing on concrete at the job slowed him to a
standstill but that is when technology came to the rescue and we old dinosaurs
discovered texting. Actually, I think his grandkids taught him. I have spent a goodly amount of time sitting
and reading all of the exchanges we had, mostly ones taking place during Dodger
games and they were amazing haikus of moments in time. For a guy who really
wasn’t too much into long phone conversations or even extended discussions he
was a real poet with his text compositions. I could literally read these for an
hour and for sports fans they all would be funny and meaningful. I will just
share a dozen to give a flavor but I have four pages just of baseball season
alone. Some were typical Timo:

“Swing
the f---ng bat!” or “can of corn with the bases full!” or “where is the strike
zone with this guy?”

When
James Loney got traded to Boston: “wicked bum!”

“Ethier…the
man who forgot how to hit”

When
ineffective Dodger reliever Mike McDougal was summoned

“Here
comes McBum!”

During
one of many Dodger hitting droughts and other team scored first run

When
I suggested D’Andre Thomas should have gone to UCLA instead of Oregon “ Thomas can’t spell UCLA!”

During
the Olympics

“Mexico just beat Brazil for the gold…look out Huntington Park!”

While
he could not attend my brother’s birthday party so I sent him a few photos on
his phone

First
one-a group shot: “who ARE all those old people?”

…and
his last text to me during the UCLA-Arizona game

“Bruins
are HOT!”

Tim was not a man who shared his feelings
easily and never wore his heart on his sleeve but in between the lines of our
rather brief conversations I came to understand his sensitive but very private
nature. He most certainly had his dark moods but would just withdraw until he
felt like rejoining the world. We talked
mostly about sports, politics, friends and family but within those little
pauses when our guards were down we made our secrets known about how we were
sometimes scared and weak and always striving to be the men our fathers were
before us. It was then that we revealed how much we meant to each other. In those small asides we also passed to each
other the essence of our happiness in being able to use that E-ticket we were
given to take a wonderful ride. The single, beautiful truths of riding our
bikes as kids through familiar streets, the pride of wearing a uniform and
being part of a team, the miracle of falling in love, of being overwhelmed by
the touch of our children and hearing ourselves called “babe” or “buddy” or
“dad.” There are so many things I never really knew about Tim, things in his
heart that only Disa knows but I can pass witness to his great happiness in his
last years of finally getting to closely share in Tandra’s life who was in his
heart every single day of her life no matter how near or far he was from her.
There was a seemingly boundless joy he enjoyed in the presence of his children
Ian and Erin and absolute delight in his healthy and lively grandchildren: Savannah, Emma, Bailey and Zoe. I
never saw him more content than when Haledon was filled with his family’s
laughter. You will hear it a hundred times today but family was absolutely
everything to this man. In looking back at how many great times I had with Tim
I am overwhelmed by the terrible truth of just how quickly it all passed. This too short life, a time that literally
flew because we were having so much fun is over but we must celebrate our good
fortune even today. We were all blessed to know such a first-class man who
earned the kind of success every sane man on the planet strives for…to be
respected and loved.

Although I would like this terrible ache
to go away I will not stop composing texts in my heart to him during Bruin or
Dodger games, I will continue to feel the need to tell him when my fortunes are
good or bad and I will still love the guy just like I always have until we meet
again. And we will meet again when I hear the voice of Vin Scully call a Dodger
win, in the eight clap roaring at Pauley, in the continuing laughter of his
family at Haledon and in the thousands of stories we will continue to tell
about the great guy we called Timo.

About Me

"My name is Addison DeWitt. My native habitat is the theater. In it I toil not, neither do I spin. I am a critic and commentator. I am essential to the theatre - as ants to a picnic, as the boll weevil to a cotton field." George Sanders in "All About Eve"